


A Romance of Many Dimensions

by SageSilentfire



Category: Flatland - Edwin A. Abbott, Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence (Gravity Falls), Flat Dreams (Gravity Falls Fanfic), Gen, I take massive liberties with tau canon, NaNoWriMo, Tag As I Go, and flat dreams canon too let's bend all the canon, i actually have an outline that's nice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 09:01:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SageSilentfire/pseuds/SageSilentfire
Summary: What happens when a fanfic gets a fandom? What happens if it happens more than once, in the same universe? And what happens when two completely separate works in the same universe collide head-on?Or: Meta on meta battle. There will be no survivors.Or: Two Gravity Falls fanverses, Transcendence AU and Flat Dreams, collide.Or: Transdimensional Arc on steroids.Or: This isn't how Bill Cipher's rise to power went, is it?Or: A being of unimaginable power tells a story to a sheep.Which summary wins? Where does the sheep belong? Who is the Storyteller? And what are the demands of the monster under Sarah Smith's bed? Read to find out!NOTE: ON EDITING HIATUS





	A Romance of Many Dimensions

**Author's Note:**

> you don't have to know everything about Flat Dreams and TAU to read this fic, but there's a considerable amount of backstory that won't be explained if you go in blind, so i would have a general idea of both
> 
> NOTE: On hiatus. Forgive me, I don't have a lot of experience with AO3 and I really need to work on my (nanowrimo!) draft before figuring out how to split it into chapters. So I'll leave this bit here. I promise this is a temporary thing, and that not much will change except for maybe the chapter breaks.
> 
> EDIT: The fic's first draft is now 23,627 words long and going strong! I'll edit it and release chapters in December!

Somewhere between nowhere and everywhere, in a place that is upside-down and rightside-up and all sorts other different directions, in a world with all sorts of chaos tumbling through it, a being of unimaginable power is writing something down urgently. She shuffles through strands of space and writes with the dew of stardust, and is utterly frustrated.

 

“Writer’s block really gets you, huh?” she asks no one in particular. No one in particular yawns, mutters a “yeah”, and falls back asleep, and the being of unimaginable power gets back to work.

 

As she is tapping her many claws against all surfaces they happened to fall onto, a thought rises through the not-quite-air and moves around, occasionally bumping into stray bits of spacetime. The being of unimaginable power, who is tired of being referred to by such a long name (you can call her The Storyteller if you want), looks up, spots the meandering thought, and pulls it out of the wedge of someone’s house it had gotten stuck on.

 

“Wherever your home might be, you’re far from it.” The Storyteller says as the thought takes shape in her claws.

 

It lets out a startled “yeet” and congeals into a creature with tiny gray spikes covering it, sharp horns, and three lashing tails. If you squinted, turned your head to the side, and took a particularly large shot of your second-favorite alcohol, it would look a bit like a sheep.

 

“Well, your home certainly is a question, since I don’t think you know where it is yet.” The Storyteller squints suspiciously at the creature in her palm. “You have a distinct look of something that was born yesterday. Not that there’s a yesterday here, but there certainly is one wherever you belong.” She leans back with a _hmm…_ and the little thought sprouts wings and hovers cautiously a few feet above her claw.

 

“We’ll have to discover where it is together. Perhaps I’ll break my writers block, and perhaps you’ll find you a home. Or maybe you belong in the belly of the monster under Sarah Smith’s bed, I need something to feed it and it simply will not accept carrots.” The sheep looks a little alarmed at this, and The Storyteller carries on. “But I doubt that. I don’t think it will accept carrots any more than it will accept you.

 

“By the by, how do you like my work?” She holds out a sheet of paper with all sorts of scribbles and squiggles covering it. The thought bleats in confusion.

 

“Art is unappreciated in it's time. Not that you'd be able to read it,” The Storyteller says, folding the paper until it disappears, “someone from Dimension 46’/ wouldn’t either. Speaking of which, let's get to finding out where you belong.” She gives the thought a good look, and _hmmms_ again. “I think I might know who you belong to.” She smiles mischievously at the sheep. “It takes a bit of backstory, and I'm sure our lovely reader is waiting for the _real_ fanfic to start, so I’ll do my best to start it.

 

“Did you know that in one dimension 46’/, at 7012 AT, when our story begins, a team of various creatures had won a Nobel Prize for compiling and figuring out how three types of demons were created?

 

“Bear with me, this _is_ relevant.

 

“Type one had been known for a long time. If a soul sneaks into a mindscape and spends a long enough time there, it would rise to become one of the two most powerful creatures that can exist in the mindscape: an angel, or a demon. Every soul has its limits, however, and without any spells or rituals to temporarily enhance those limits, they cannot get any stronger.

 

“Type two is a “second generation” demon. If one or more demons decide to create a new demon, a rare experience as demons rarely cooperate, let alone enjoy each other's company, they can leave a sort of egg in some safe territory in the mindscape. It will attract a soul on its own, and a new demon will be born. Normally these demons are no stronger than their parents, and their potential is limited.

 

“Type three is where things get interesting. Souls are just fragments of thought in a neat little pile, and they have to come from somewhere, no? And thanks to very illegal research performed some years from then, experts in mindscape dynamics were able to discover that globs of thought in the mindscape have the potential to become conscious, and develop into extremely sophisticated soul-like creatures – like you! And of course, because these creatures live in the mindscape, they will either get eaten by or become demons somehow. Perhaps they will even become full-fledged souls. But they have limits too: they are far too scattered, too messily put together, to collect much power. Souls need to die and reincarnate several times before they can collect much power. Demons born from these souls are doomed to be weak and easily crushable.

 

“So our brave researchers had hit a roadblock. They had tried all they could, but none of it explained the most powerful creature on their plane. None of it explained Alcor the Dreambender.

 

“And, though no one knew it at the time, none of it explained Bill Cipher.

 

“Would you like to hear a story?”

**Author's Note:**

> The Storyteller is an OC of mine, someone people who've known me for a while might recognize. But that doesn't matter, her identity isn't really important. She's just a narrative device, here to enact the theory of narrative causality. (She enjoys it, don’t worry)


End file.
